Well we closed on our new house last Monday, so last Monday a lot of hard labor began for me. First on the list was taking the popcorn off the ceilings so they can be repaired and textured, yes they needed repair so I figured as long as we have to have them repaired we may as well take down the fabulous glitter popcorn and bring the house into the 21st century. Besides you can always tell where a popcorn ceiling was fixed no matter how good a job they do.
I won't lie to you, removing all that popcorn was not really an easy task but I kept telling myself I'll have some awesome looking arms when I finish will all of this work. It took me 10 days to get all the popcorn off all of the ceilings in the house. I will admit I did not actually work on the ceilings everyday of those 10 days either, probably about half of the days. My method of removal did evolve over the course of my project so I thought I would share some of the highlights and low points so you can learn from my adventure.
The first day I had a spray bottle and a putty knife. I sprayed the water using a spray bottle and scraped it off with a putty knife. It was very slow and the spray bottle kind of hurt my hand after a while, however if you are really tight on cash and not so tight on time this may be the best way for you to go as you can probably find all your supplies at the dollar store.
After that first day I ran out and picked up a garden sprayer and a wider blade on a longer handle so I wouldn't have to climb up and down the ladder all day and could spray more ceiling area faster. I used more of a floor squeegee as this is what I saw at the small hardware store right by the house and didn't have time to run to a bigger store that morning, it took a bit of elbow grease to get it to scrape as well as the metal blade on my putty knife. The garden sprayer definitely made life a whole lot easier and for about $20 was very well worth the money. The squeegee was definitely better, but when I had almost finished my project I discovered something truly awesome when I was wondering around at Lowe's (I'm sure other stores carry this too and wish I knew of it's existence sooner).
What did I discover? It was a blade for scraping popcorn off the ceiling that had a frame around the scraper that you attach a bag to so you catch all the popcorn in a bag instead of all over the floor and yourself. It was about $20 and you could attach it to a screw on handle to lengthen it so you don't need to climb up and down a ladder all day which trust me is a good thing unless you really want to feel the burn in your legs.
Also worth mentioning is to run into your local dollar store first and see what supplies they have. I got gloves and masks and plastic tarps and spray bottles and mops and putty knives and all kinds of great supplies so I wouldn't have to worry about cleaning all those little things when I am done. Yes I know that it isn't very green to dispose of things but sometimes it is greener in it's own way and to me this is one of those times. Trust me you don't want to try to clean that popcorn off of anything you don't really need to, it is a really tedious prospect and uses a lot of water and still often doesn't really come clean. Also, that popcorn is hard on some of these things. My putty knives rusted quickly even while working on a room, that wet popcorn just sticks to things and rusted my putty knives quickly. Plastic tarps that are catching a big mess like this are definitely something better off thrown out, I just rolled the edges into the center and threw the whole mess in the trash.
This is a picture of the last room I scraped popcorn from. Yes that project is marked off my to do list.
You may want to know what you need, in case you plan to do this yourself. Well, you definitely need some water (you can use a hand spray bottle like I bought at the dollar store or you can use a garden sprayer like I opted for in the end) and a scraper (you can use a putty style knife like I bought at the dollar store or you can opt for a wider blade or maybe even go with the one that you attach a bag to to catch all the popcorn and you may want to get a longer handle so you don't need to stand on a ladder or chair).
Some things you should definitely consider are goggles, masks to cover your nose and mouth, gloves (I found some for gardening that had a really nice grip on the underside at the dollar store) tarps to protect your floors (especially carpet or wood, I wasn't as careful on the tile floors) and a mop to clean up the floors when you are done. If you get it on the walls you will want a microfiber towel or something to get it off the walls. I used a dollar store water bottle with mostly water and a little white vinegar added to it to really dissolve the mess off the walls and floors.
